Doha farm text reflects India`s core concerns

The chair for Doha agriculture negotiations, Ambassador Crawford Falconer, who came under intense pressure to curtail the flexible treatment for special products, stuck to his initial position by including India's proposal that 12-20 per cent of farm tariff lines will be eligible for special product treatment. He also included the part that 5 per cent farm tariff lines will be exempted from tariff cut.

The United States, along with a group of farm exporting countries like Australia, mounted pressure that these limits on special products should be severely curtailed. The US demanded that only 1 per cent tariff lines should be considered for zero cut.

The chair also ignored demands from the United States and other farm exporters on transparency requirements for special products. Commerce Minister Minister Kamal Nath flatly rejected the demands on transparency requirements saying they amounting to conditionalities.

On the special safeguard mechanism, which allows developing countries to impose curbs on excessive imports that aim to damage domestic producers, the chair included India's proposals as well as the elements proposed by the opponents of the mechanism.

As regards the cuts on overall trade-distorting domestic subsidies, which is one of the central issues involving rising farm subsidies in the industrialised countries, Ambassador Falconer continued with his earlier proposals that the United States must agree to reduce its overall subsidies to a level between $13 billion and $ 16.4 billion. However, the US wants to continue around $17 billion.

However, the second revised draft contains several brackets on issues such as subsidy reduction for cotton, treatment of tropical products and sensitive products, and so on.

Ambassador Falconer said the revised version "reflects where we are in light of the discussions that we have had since the last version over three months ago."